Sunday, March 02, 2008

Preserving Rue des Rosiers

About a hundred people, according to the organizers and the police, gathered on Sunday in front of the old Goldenberg restaurant, in the heart of the historic Jewish quarter of Paris, to preserve "the Jewish character" of Rue des Rosiers.

"No to the disappearance of Rue des Rosiers! No to a street of designer shops! This is just the beginning, we will gather here every Sunday" said one of the organizers, Joseph Finkelstein, as a group of musicians played Jewish music.

For the association, which is chaired by Nicolas Secondi, "the municipal authorities have encouraged, directly or indirectly, this trend," in a Jewish neighbourhood which has now almost completely lost its character ".

The city’s most famous Jewish neighborhood is in the Marais and is known as the Pletzl – Yiddish for little Place. This 4th arrondissment district (Metro: St. Paul) has been home to Jews on and off since the thirteenth century. Today, though gentrification has made this one of the city’s most fashionable quarters, up and down rue des Rosiers between rue Malher and rue des Hospitalières-St.-Gervais, as well as on the streets off rue des Rosiers, you will find Jewish restaurants, bookshops, boulangeries and charcuteries along with synagogues and shtiebels.